by Matthew Ward
The knight’s first sweep cut the nearest skeleton in two, splintering yellowed skull through to grave-garbed pelvis in a single strike. Scarcely had the blade come to rest when it spiralled out in a whirling arc, parrying strikes to Kain’s front and behind, before angling sharply down to cut the legs out from under a luckless skeleton. Slowly, unhurriedly, Kain stepped into the emptied space.
‘I told you she was good,’ said Mirika.
To Yelen’s mind ‘good’ didn’t even begin to cover it. Pace by pace, Kain made her way along the bridge’s icy stones. Chimes of steel on steel and the crunch of metal on bone accompanied every step, the bastard sword dancing a grim ballet to the rhythm of Kain’s tread. A skeleton collapsed with every strike, the animating magic dispersing as their bodies disintegrated. Others clattered forward.
A pair crawled hand over hand up the bridge’s supports, cutting off Kain’s path. Kain’s thrust crumpled the chest of the first before its blow could land. Then she ripped the fearsome blade sideways through the ruined ribcage, beheading the second newcomer in the same brutal motion.
Yelen lost sight of Kain as three more skeletons dropped onto the precarious ledge before the archway. She ducked beneath a curved blade. Steel sparked on stone above her head as she thrust, her attacker collapsing as its spine shattered. Serene turned aside a second blade with a reversed dagger. Her lashing foot sent one skeleton tumbling into another, the momentum sweeping both into the darkness.
‘Let go of me!’ Yelen turned to see a half-risen skeleton clawing at Mirika’s coat. ‘I. Said. Let. Go!’ Her sword hacked down with each terse shout. The light faded from the skeleton’s eyes as its bones splintered. Mirika pulled away, breathing hard but her eyes wild. ‘Hah!’
Yelen grinned, the precarious situation forgotten. The distant, dour woman she’d scarcely recognized had gone. This was the Mirika she remembered. Then the telltale crack and scrape of thawing dead grew to new heights, pinpricks of green light blinking to existence in the passageway ahead.
‘Kain!’
The pommel of the knight’s sword crunched down onto a veiled skull. Her last obstacle clear, Kain swept her weapon down into a low guard and stepped through the arch. ‘Run!’
Mirika took off, Serene on her heels. With a last glance at Kain, Yelen followed.
* * *
Mirika ran pell-mell along the winding passage, aware of little save for the thunder of feet behind, and the green lights winking into existence in front of her. Her coat ripped beneath grasping fingers. Cold bone tore at her skin. Each time, she dipped just briefly enough into the timeflow to rip free, then thundered on.
Part of her wanted to laugh with the joy of the danger, but the rest of her feared what lay ahead. With every step, she felt the black force of Szarnos’ will grow stronger – a melding of terror and nausea pricking at her thoughts. On a rational level, she knew that the orb could no longer claim her – Magnis had seen to that. But still, the thought – the possibility, however unlikely – of the liche crawling beneath her skin again…?
Bony arms closed around Mirika’s neck, the momentum of her run half-dragging the skeleton out of its alcove. Stifling a yelp, she seized the creature’s wrists and set its tempo skittering across the timeflow. Yellowed bone cracked, bursting into dust and then she was free. Lurching to a halt, Mirika aimed a kick at the lifeless skull, and sent it clattering away. A flush of satisfaction at the act of petty violence helped tamp down her unease, and she ran on.
Little by little, the funerary alcoves grew scarcer, and finally yielded to walls of dressed stone. Mirika jerked to a halt as hands – flesh and blood hands, this time – grabbed her arms.
‘Hold up, will you?’ said Serene, between rasping breaths. ‘We don’t want to plunge into that lot without the others.’
Mirika frowned and peered down the passageway, finally noting the green glow suffusing the next bend. ‘That’s the temple?’
Serene nodded, and glanced back the way they’d come. ‘Next corner. You really don’t remember any of it?’
Mirika shook her head. ‘I’d like to forget the bits I can.’
‘You and me both.’
‘Even Kas?’
Serene grimaced. ‘Especially Kas. What use are memories? Not that I’ll have those for much longer, way this is going.’
Not knowing what to say, Mirika peered back the way they’d come. She tried to forget that Serene was only there because of Yelen’s promise. Serene would kill Azzanar, and in that moment Yelen would be lost forever. If she wasn’t already.
After what seemed an age, Yelen and Kain emerged from the darkness. Not at a run, as Serene and Mirika herself had, but one steady backward pace at a time. The women stood shoulder to shoulder in the confines, Yelen’s sword thrusting and parrying with a confidence that seemed most unlike her sister. A lot really had changed.
Bone splintered. The last pair of green eyes plunged into darkness. At last, Yelen picked up her pace, jogging the last few steps to join Mirika and Serene.
‘That’s the last of them for now,’ she gasped, plainly out of breath. ‘But there are plenty more coming.’
‘What I wouldn’t give to have a firecaller along,’ muttered Serene. ‘Think of the flames roaring through that tunnel.’
‘Wouldn’t matter. He’s waking the entire catacomb,’ said Kain. Her tone remained steady as a rock. Where her companions all sported grazes and cuts from grasping hands and near misses, the knight remained unmarred. So far as Mirika could tell, not even a single skeleton had laid a bony claw upon her. ‘No way out for us that way, not now. And the idea of fighting Szarnos with his army on my heels doesn’t do much for me.’
Mirika felt the knight’s dark eyes boring into hers. There was no escaping her meaning. ‘You want me to collapse the passageway?’
‘Can you?’
Mirika closed her eyes, and let herself drift on the timeflow. It responded readily – eager, almost, for her touch. ‘I think so.’
‘Wait a minute!’ Serene pushed past Mirika and glared at Kain. ‘You can’t do that! What if there isn’t another way out? We’ll be trapped!’
‘Should’ve thought of that before you rushed in, girl,’ said Kain. ‘We’re already trapped. She does this, we’ll at least have a chance.’
Serene lapsed into taut silence. The scraping and clattering of pursuing skeletons echoed along the tunnel.
Mirika glanced at the nearest arch, its stones already warped and buckled from centuries of erosion and settlement. It wouldn’t take much. Drown it in the timeflow, stretch its tempo to breaking point… She’d have done it in a heartbeat even a week ago. Probably would have thought of it herself. Even with no immediate prospect of another exit. Now…? Now it wasn’t her decision to make alone. ‘Yelen?’
Her sister threw a look back down the tunnel and shrugged. ‘Did any of us really think we’d be getting out of here anyway?’ The tightness around her eyes undermined the levity of her tone. ‘Do it.’
Mirika crossed to the archway and laid her hand on its twisted pillar. Her borrowed gloves, too large for her thin fingers, chafed at her skin. ‘Everyone get clear. I can bring down the arch, but there’s no way of telling where it’ll stop.’
Serene retreated towards the distant glow. ‘Mad. All of you. Mad.’
Mirika lost Yelen’s response beneath the sudden rush of immersing herself in the timeflow. Light twisted from lantern-light orange, to crimson, to a deep and pulsing red. She took a deep breath, and plunged beneath the tick of passing seconds, reaching for the sonorous, unyielding tick of the Clock of Ages, the emptiness of the counter-beat. The tempo of the pillar – the whole archway – lurched to a new and terrifying pace. Thousands upon thousands of years ran away beneath her hand, all in the space of a heartbeat.
The mortar gave first, rotting away into thin, grey particulates. Then the stones themselves split asunder, the dust from their cores darker and coarser. Mirika gave the arch one last push and stepped away, colour
s snapping back to normality as she rose from the timeflow.
‘That’s done it! Move! Move!’
Yelen and Kain, already halfway to Serene, redoubled their pace. The archway’s surviving stones crashed down, sending clouds of dust and ice spiralling along the passageway. The creak-crack of the advancing dead gave way to a deep, throaty roar as the rock succumbed to natural law. The roof split asunder, the newly opened cracks adding their own cascades of dust and rubble as the dolorous thunder rumbled along the passageway.
Mirika ran on, too wearied by her efforts to do more than skim the timeflow to speed her on. Chunks of stone crashed past, some no larger than a fist, others vast enough to crush her flat. All missed. By a hair’s breadth, and never by more than the fraction of a second gained by her immersion in the timeflow, but they missed.
Mirika flung herself around the corner, a gale of dust driving her on. It gusted across the threshold of another, intact, archway, and flung her to the head of a stairway.
She had a brief glimpse of surroundings that were unfamiliar, and yet niggled at memory like old friends: a gleaming altar, rows of stone pews – the tattered-winged statue with a dragon’s head. And the host of risen dead, their raiment a mix of priestly robes and warrior’s chain, shambling up the stairs to greet her. Helpless in the rush of wind, Mirika skidded over the top step and plunged towards them.
‘Not that way, girl.’
A strong hand closed around her upper arm, hauling her sideways over the stone banister and onto a tiered pew. Kain gave her a hard shove away from the stairs, and then dived after her.
As Mirika fell, the entrance archway snapped like a wishbone. The thunder of tortured stone redoubled, and the entire entranceway collapsed in a spill of boulders and shattered facing stones. The river of rubble crashed on, sweeping down the stairway, and snatching a vast portion of the rotting congregation into renewed oblivion.
A boulder crashed over Mirika’s head, gouging a chunk from a pillar before crunching away into the darkness. Icicles plunged from the ceiling, and shattered all around. For long moments, the bedrock groaned and shifted, as if threatening to consume the temple as it had the entrance passageway. Then the deluge of dust and stone eased.
Serene’s hand closed around Mirika’s, dragging her upright. ‘If that’s what happens when you shatter one arch, reckon you could’ve pulled the whole bloody catacomb down.’
Yelen shook her head ferociously, spilling dust from her hair. ‘Wouldn’t have worked. We need to be sure Szarnos is dead.’
‘I could’ve lived with the risk.’
Kain eyed the surviving skeletons warily. ‘Look alive. There’s plenty of the welcoming party left.’
Mirika followed her gaze. The stairway was all but buried under a pile of broken stone, and much of the congregation buried with it. But at least two dozen skeletons still roamed the pews, the terrible creaking-clicking of their limbs oddly loud in the aftermath of the collapse.
‘What about Szarnos?’ asked Yelen.
‘Haven’t seen him,’ said Kain, hefting her sword experimentally. ‘Maybe he’s under that lot.’
‘No,’ said Mirika, her thoughts assailed by flashes of compulsions not truly hers. ‘He’ll be in the crypt.’ She pointed. ‘Beneath the altar.’
‘If he didn’t know we were coming before, he will now,’ said Kain philosophically.
Mirika coughed, and wiped at her streaming eyes. ‘Unless he thinks we’re under that lot. Gods know I nearly was.’
Her hand started shaking. Her knees buckled. Belatedly, she realised that a hurried meal didn’t make up for days without food and drink – however much Szarnos’ magic had kept her alive in that time.
Yelen caught her before she hit the dust-strewn flagstones. ‘Take it easy, Rika. We’ll manage it from here.’
She shook her head, annoyed at how tired she felt. ‘I can fight.’ But the sword felt impossibly heavy in her hand.
‘I’m sure you can,’ said Kain. ‘But take it slow anyway, yes? Give the rest of us a chance to contribute. What do you think, Serene?’
‘I think that if we get out of here alive, I’m killing you myself.’
Kain shrugged and sidestepped towards the nearest aisle. ‘We get out of this alive, I might let you try. In the meantime, help me clear a path?’
Serene glanced at the skeletons swarming up the pews. ‘No. But I’ll let you help me clear a path.’
Kain cracked a smile. It was wolfish more than beneficent, malevolent more than amused, but it was the most beautiful thing Mirika had seen in years. ‘Good enough.’
With a booming laugh, she ran towards the foe.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Step by step, they approached the altar, broken bones scattering from their boots and empty eye sockets peering accusingly up from the ice-sheathed flagstones. Azzanar kept pace the whole way, her accusing stare unblinking as the sun. Up ahead, Kain vanished from sight, descending a narrow stair running behind the altar. Serene grabbed a skeleton by its neck and dashed its skull to splinters on the altar’s black stone before following.
Yelen led Mirika through the green glow of the stained glass windows, eyes flicking left and right, watching for threats. Nothing came close. A pair of robed skeletons creak-clacked their way across from the temple’s rear, a threat for later, not for now. The path was clear – or almost so. Serene’s grunt and a crunch of bone suggested more trouble awaited in the crypt.
Her arm tight around Mirika’s waist, Yelen descended the narrow altar-steps. Unblinking rime-crusted statues peered at her from alcoves in the stairway, six majestically robed figures to each side, their graven expressions hollow and yet burgeoning with malice. She suppressed a shudder. The Hidden Court, and they were walking into their lair. Sure, they were dead, but so was Szarnos. Death wasn’t an obstacle if your plans were in place – it was an opportunity.
Yelen’s certainty crumbled as she approached the dark opening beneath the altar. What business did she have in that place? Opposing something like the Hidden Court wasn’t a job for a delver, it was a quest worthy of wizard – hells, an entire college of wizards.
‘They’ve awaited this moment for centuries,’ breathed Azzanar. ‘Their return was foretold before Karamasz’s first stone was laid. You really think you can interfere? You really think you’ll survive?’
‘Look out!’ shouted Mirika.
Yelen’s world lurched as Mirika’s weight, so lately a burden, became an urgent shove. The stairway took on a ruddy sheen, the descending edge of the ceremonial scythe slowing to a crawl. It arced down, parting the trailing tangles of Mirika’s hair and slicing through the tails of her coat.
Yelen crashed face first into the wall. The halberd’s blade sparked on a stone step. Mirika, balance lost, tumbled away down the stairs. The red light faded as the sisters’ contact broke, time’s natural flow reasserting itself.
The scythe, moving already, glanced off the statue to Yelen’s left. She spun around, and found herself staring up into a skeleton’s rigid grin. With a creak of bone, the creature raised the scythe high and swept it down.
Yelen threw herself forward. Her shoulder thumped into the skeleton’s armoured chest. The creature slammed back into the wall with a crack of bone, its blow going wide. Dimly, Yelen realised that the last statue on the left had not been a statue at all, but a guardian waiting in ambush.
The world lurched again as the scythe’s butt struck her head a glancing blow. A stair’s uneven tread took Yelen in the ankles, tippling her back. Stars burst behind her eyes as the wicked crescent of the blade screamed down.
Yelen had no conscious memory of raising her sword in a parry. But raise it she did, one arm braced against the stairs, elbow locked; the other aloft in defiance. Steel clanged on steel, the sword-blade shuddering with the impact, the scythe blade juddering to a halt an inch from her brow.
‘Get away from my sister!’
Yelen heard a splintering crunch. The skeleton staggered, the
scales of its armour parting as a rusted sword-point pierced them from within.
The pressure on Yelen’s sword slackened. She rolled aside. A second crunch sounded, and the skeleton collapsed in a heap of lifeless bone.
Mirika sank against a wall, sword dangling from her hand. ‘That was too close.’
‘“I don’t think I’ll be much use,”’ mimicked Yelen, regaining her feet.
To her surprise, she didn’t feel any fear, despite how close she’d come to death. Was it simply that she’d seen worse in the barrows of the Lower Reach, or because even her subconscious knew there was worse to come?
‘Like you said, you’ve come a long way. I’m not letting you out of my sight.’
But despite the note of levity in Mirika’s voice, she sounded bone-weary. With a nod, Yelen slid her arm beneath her sister’s shoulders and they pressed on into the depths.
Aware how close she’d come to an ugly death, Yelen peered at every nook and cranny as they advanced. Azzanar remained silent, the demon presumably aware that her bleak prophecy had come within a hair’s breadth of self-fulfilment.
They passed more of the guardian skeletons, their armoured forms lifeless and often limbless. A cluster lay at the point the stairs levelled out into a low-ceilinged vestibule. Ahead, there was only silence. Yelen preferred the clamour of battle. At least while there was noise, it meant the others were still alive. Silence offered only unknowns.
A handful of steps later, the musty air filled with the familiar guttural chant of Szarnos’ incantations, and Yelen found herself wishing for silence to return.
A great iron gate loomed out of the darkness, its rusted leaves parting barely enough to allow passage. A bas-relief of a dragon spread tattered wings above, a corroded brass seal marked the floor below. Even through the thick coating of ice, Yelen made out thirteen jagged runes arranged around the circumference. Thirteen runes. The serpent-rune of Szarnos, and the twelve of the Hidden Court.
‘You ready for this?’ asked Mirika.
‘Stupid question,’ Yelen replied, tightening her grip on the sword. ‘Let’s just get it over with. But if there are other orbs down there, for gods’ sake don’t touch them.’